An article from Stephen Totilo appeared on Kotaku recently which discussed the editor-in-chief's growing sympathy towards (and some might argue self-flagellation over) the various enemies he's been dispatching in Assassin's Creed: Origins. Specifically, he came across a love letter addressed to the captain of a base he was infiltrating, and it apparently gave Totilo the feels. A twinge of "gamer's angst" about the otherwise nameless mooks that the player is required to dispatch in order to advance the game.
To which I respond: Quit whinging, Stephen.
For all the discussion in the comments about "non-lethal takedowns" and "how it's only in a simulation," there's a couple of operative points which I think Totilo isn't grasping, or won't allow himself to grasp.
The first, and probably the biggest point, is that the Assassin's Creed series is the record of a war which stems from a rebellion, one which if it isn't precisely a slave rebellion, it's a close cousin to one. In those circumstances, the rebels are not going to be on the favorable end of the balance of forces. And because of that unfavorable position, there are really only two options: die badly or fight dirty. The Templars have the resources, the manpower, and the reach to do anything in any location. They don't have to worry about finding a few people with a specific ability to fill out their ranks. All they need are want ads and lots of cash on hand to pay people. The Assassins, on the other hand, are operating on a comparative shoestring. While they can train people to do a lot of the physical work, the few who have the unique abilities required to be full-bore Assassins (such as the Eagle Sight) are hard to find, which severely restricts the operations that the Brotherhood can execute, which in turn limits their operational "punch." Faced with this, the Assassins aren't in a position to fight a nice "clean" war against the Templars. A hundred-to-one odds means that they can't face off in a straight up fight consistently and win. The Assassins have to pick their battles, and they can't afford to be worried about fighting fair. Which means that they also can't afford to agonize over things like "collateral damage" or following the "rules of war." If both sides were on equal footing logistically, it might be a different story. But they aren't, and it isn't.
The second point is the reason why the Assassins and the Templars are fighting. Both ostensibly have the same goal: to protect the human race. The problem is how each faction goes about trying to achieve that goal. The Assassins are the descendants, either literally or philosophically, of those rebels who went against the Precursors that created the Pieces of Eden. As such, they're disinclined to let humanity supinely return to a state even remotely similar to the one they occupied under the Precursors, even if those Precursors are no longer present. The Templars, meanwhile, seem to have experienced a bit of mission drift. Sure, it's hard to control a species when they're all dead, but preservation of the species is certainly a secondary consideration by the time of Altair and the Third Crusade. For the Templars, any thoughts of protecting people is more a case of "protecting them from themselves," the idea that the bulk of the population literally can't be trusted with any sort of personal freedom. The faceless mooks and named leadership aren't misunderstood guardians trying to keep human civilization from the forces of entropy. They are volunteering to put the boot on the necks of people who have no idea they are being stepped on. In the conflict between the Assassins and the Templars, 99.99% of the human race are nothing but innocent bystanders.
The Assassins and the Templars are human. And like any human, they can be complex creatures. There's nothing that says a Templar can't have hobbies, or friendships, or even romantic relationships. It's entirely possible that a Templar might have a loving spouse, children whom he adores, community organizations he supports both financially and with volunteer efforts, and parents whose care he takes very seriously. None of those absolve him of the terrible things he does for the Templars, nor do they demand any sort of consideration when an Assassin is poised in the rafters and ready to drive six inches of steel through the back of his head. If anything, getting a hidden blade through the brain pan is a far better death than most Templars deserve. By the same token, the Assassin probably has no problem with that same Templar's wife, kids, parents, or community groups. Heck, both the Assassin and the Templar might belong to the same community group, possibly even working alongside each other at PTA bake sales or finding homes for shelter pets. But it is what the Templar does in his capacity to advance the cause of the Templars that defines whether the Assassin kills him or not. And while it's fine and well to talk about trying to get individual Templars to defect to the side of the Assassins, it's also a long and arduous process which will always remain under the specter of questionable reliability. In the calculus of asymmetrical warfare, a 100% dead Templar is more reliable than a live traitor whose new loyalty can only ever be 99%.
Bottom line: you buy the premise, you buy the bit. And if the premise of the game is to fight dirty against a bunch of people who have volunteered for the purpose of subjugating the entire human race, doing as much damage as possible, then the bit should be fighting as dirty as the game will allow. Indeed, it's interesting that the games don't let you fully commit to the premise (since you can't kill innocent bystanders). I would think the consideration of bystander casualties would actually be a gameplay enhancer, motivating players to inflict maximum damage with the most narrow possible focus. Sure, you'd have players who would gleefully slaughter a bunch of civvies just to get the biggest boom they could come up with, but I'd like to think the bulk of the community would take it as an additional challenge, a chance to prove their skills in mayhem by making sure that only the redshirts and the named targets get stabbed.
No comments:
Post a Comment